Now that I’m back 
and settled in after GDC’18, I find my heart 
seeking to get started right away on my demo reel content.
I was going to add the heat distort and vector paint in the charred logs when I got back, but as I sat down to do this I realized… well… as I said. My heart isn’t into improving this effect anymore. In a weird brain way, I’m kind of bummed about this, as I hate to leave this so… unfinished. Yet… I want to strike the anvil of my ideas with the knowledge I gained from GDC’18 hot 
in my mind. Thus this is to be the last update, per the parameters I set for myself. I came into this as I currently know how to do; shooting from the hip. That’s kind of how I make effects right now. I have no idea what I’m doing, as usual, but I know enough to make a jest of what I seek.
So I cobbled together these fires, which for what it is I’d say… decent. I guess. An OK first time Campfire with my basic knowhow. I mean, it does look like fire in some way. The Unreal 4 one more so then the Unity one, per the reference I was using.
One of the virtues of knowing and experience is that it gives a reference point to help form a plan of attack. How to anticipate potential problems along the way. In my case, in my blind attack, I made such a focus on movement that I didn’t take as much time to consider how I was going to go about color. I just went… maybe this will work. It does work, but not as much as I would have liked. Far too… flat.
The biggest take way from all of this? The power of Blend Modes. It’s not really been something I thought about much, as it’s just “here is how you setup your material” for VFX work. I think that’s been where my biggest blunder of ignorance lies for this, which of course started at the very beginning. For both Unreal & Unity. I did all my work on the wrong blend. I had started out in Unreal 4, using that masked bland. Unity doesn’t have a masked blend (as far as I could tell), so I used additive instead. “Oh I’ll just match them”.
Brilliant. 
So that is what I noted for myself, of my Campfire for this Forum Contest. I would like to hear your constructive criticisms, suggestions, and thoughts should you have any. Or… we can all just agree this sucks and not comment. That’s an option too. 
(Won’t learn much more from that option though.)
For the final showings, here is the Unreal 4 Fire (with fixed “black popping” issue), as well as the main shader node flow and the view of the effect inside the effects editor.
https://imgur.com/xKFJo13
^High-Rez Picture of Unreal 4 Fire Shader
Also, wanted to show the main shader for the fire in Unity, so that is there too.
https://imgur.com/2MgPKvg
^High-Rez Picture of Unity Fire Shader
